GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Dimitris Babiniotis, Danae Papadatou and Emmanouil Mavrantonakis, Zepos & Yannopoulos
Miscellaneous registries Other useful registries are: • the ships registry and the aircraft registry; • the Intellectual Property Organization (IPO)’s trade mark registry; • the Electronic Pledge Registry (for the establish - ment and enforcement of pledge rights – ie, pledge over movable property without delivery of the encumbered items to the pledgee, or pledge on registered instruments, claims and rights – through a unified and modern legal framework). Litigation Proceedings for Identifying Assets Identifying assets through litigation is limited. In the pre-judgment phase, exhibit production decisions can potentially be of help to creditors – albeit hav - ing to satisfy a very high procedural threshold to be successful. In the post-judgment phase, reference is made to the analysis under “Financial Institutions” in this section. If enforcement is – or is very likely to be – unsuccess - ful owing to lack of assets owned by the debtor, the creditor may apply for a court order compelling the debtor to: • submit a detailed list of its asset alienations in the past five years; and • be sworn under oath as to the list’s accuracy and completeness. Post-judgment, assuming the judgment is enforce - able, competent court bailiffs can track down and seize movable and immovable property of the debtor. Irrespective of whether assets have been identified, various tools are available to seize property, impose freezing orders, or establish judicial escrows. 2. Domestic Judgments 2.1 Types of Domestic Judgments In Greece, court judgments are categorised based on several criteria.
records, including information about third-party claims “announced” to the insolvency administrator, can be inspected in hard-copy books held at the locally com - petent court of first instance. Financial institutions Under Greek law, bank secrecy is strictly protected. As a rule, a creditor cannot obtain information as to whether the debtor holds bank accounts with a Greek bank, nor the balances or encumbrances of such accounts. By exception, a creditor who holds a first-instance judgment – whether from a Greek or a foreign state court – may serve a provisional attach - ment note upon a bank as third party. In that case, the bank is under a duty to respond within eight calendar days, disclosing whether it maintains accounts in the debtor’s name, the corresponding balances, and any The Greek credit reporting system is operated by Tire - sias SA, a private company supervised by the Bank of Greece. It maintains databases on individuals’ and companies’ credit history, including non-performing loans, bounced cheques, and court-imposed pay - ment orders. Banks use this information to assess creditworthiness. Access is restricted, in order to ensure data protection and privacy, and entries are kept for limited periods. Administrative authorities existing encumbrances. Tiresias credit bureau Under specific circumstances and should legitimate interest be proven, tax authorities may disclose infor - mation on a person’s declared income, property, and assets. For this purpose, an order by the locally com - petent Attorney General must usually be issued. e-Auction Auctions in Greece are conducted digitally on the offi - cial website of the Greek State, e-Auction , and are managed by competent notaries. The e-Auction plat - form is accessible to anyone without charge. It pro - vides information on real properties to be auctioned (eg, the location of the property, the owner-debtor, initial bidding price).
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